The further and continuing adventures of the girl who sat in the back of your homeroom, reading and daydreaming.

Monday, December 02, 2013

So We Went To See Matisse

Or some of his oeuvre, really, and don't let the French fool ya; he did actual work with his actual hands and though you may picture canvases bright with primary colors and primitive-looking images, the artist was well capable of capturing a model's likeness with a bare minimum of lines--

--which seems only fair, considering.

He moved between mediums quite fluidly:

And by now, the boys are all wishing they'd studied Art, too.

(Color? You wanted color? They have all of Jazz on the wall! Photos don't really do it justice, or mine don't; try these.)

It wasn't just Matisse-- here's Europa, takin' it on the lam (or being pitched the ol' bull, depending on how you want to read it).

Even the working walls are Art:

"Day seven, -- or is it eight? -- trapped in William Gibson's mind. My partner swears she keeps catching glimpses of a gigantic and terrifyingly cerulean Formicidae but it can't be real. At night, we sleep in flimsy boxes, swaying high over water; by day, we search these sterile, well-lit corridors. Is there no way out? The ceilings are all the color of a television tuned to a dead station or an Amtrak engine pulling into one, fuzzily gray or a horribly flat, glowing blue."

Tam got into the spirit of the thing, and over a late lunch, did her own impression of a Picasso:

A fun day spent with Tam and the Data Viking at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. There may be many museums like it, but this one is ours.

Some of the best art results from accidents. I think there was an NEA exhibit in LA a few years ago that had fenders and other car parts post collision displayed on pedestals. That was carrying the aphorism a bit too far.

"I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions."